Move forward after power plant closure
The Lansing power plant has been a cornerstone of Lansing for decades. The plant has burned its last coal, produced its last electricity from coal and will now sit dormant – that is, unless the town, plant owner, county and state can work together to forge a new path forward.
Some argue that representatives like myself and Town Supervisor Ed LaVigne should have pushed back harder to prevent the plant from closing. This does not acknowledge what we did to save the plant as a power producer and what we’re doing now to prevent the plant from being a stranded asset.
Ten years ago, we fought to repower the plant with natural gas. That town meeting filled the middle school auditorium. Ed and I put up billboards, rallied people to call the governor, lobbied NYSEG for the new gas supply and collected more than 1000 signatures to repower the plant.
In the end, the governor rejected the idea. I’ve written and spoken consistently about how the lack of natural gas in Lansing harms the poor and middle class the most, forcing them to pay more to heat their homes than their neighbors in surrounding towns and the city of Ithaca. The governor has been just as consistent in his opposition to all things natural gas including supply pipelines.
That brings us to today. This is not a choice between having a power plant or data center. Once it became apparent there would be no natural gas run to the plant, it was only a matter of time until the power plant closed. Ed and I can rail against the governor, bemoaning how unfair it is that the plant was not repowered, but that will not reopen the power plant.
The wholesale price of electricity was nowhere near where the plant needed it to be to produce power profitably. Activists pushing for the plant to close weren’t helpful, but the economics played as big a role. It’s questionable that, even if the plant had the new natural gas supply, it could have competed with brand new gas plants coming online.
I’ve been asked to “call out” the governor, to “hold him to account.” I’ll continue to do that in the case of the natural gas moratorium on Lansing, stifling our economic growth and putting us at an economic disadvantage with the rest of the county. I don’t see how that approach advances Lansing’s interests in regards to the power plant.
The plant is closed. I wish it wasn’t, and I fought to keep it open, but I can’t change the economics of coal in this country or what the governor sees as a mandate from most voters to stop using coal and limit natural gas. If that’s not a mandate, then voters need to show up at the polls and send that message.
As I’ve said, constraining natural gas in New York harms those least able to afford higher fuel prices. It’s a hidden tax on the poor and middle class. While that’s important to reiterate frequently in regards to the moratorium, it will not bring the plant back to life.
The only way to resurrect the plant now is a reimagining of what it can be. The company envisions a data center, and why not? It already has a cooling source that’s permitted and high-tension power lines with a permit.
For those who would now argue that we should be confrontational with Gov. Cuomo, I’d say we argued loudly and repeatedly against the direction he was going with the plant while still trying to work with him; we lost. To move forward, we’ve returned to working with the state on a future for the powerplant. What will that take?
The county and town of Lansing need to support the plant’s applications to the New York Power Authority and National Grid for power allocations and cheaper power that will allow them to convert the Somerset and Cayuga coal plants to data centers.
These centers use an enormous amount of electricity, and even with cheaper power upstate, to make this project feasible, they need discounted power from the state. The plants also need state prioritization for developing solar generation and power storage on these sites. These are large-scale projects. To break ground this year, they need direct involvement from NYPA, NYSEG and NYSERDA.
To answer critics who say their local representatives didn’t fight hard enough to keep the plant open, my response: it was a decade-long fight. We were there. In the end, political and economic forces overwhelmed the effort. Now, we’re left fighting to keep that site alive, preventing it from becoming a worthless investment on the shores of Cayuga Lake.
